Cranes?

Great blue heron?

What Formerly said. Probably a Great Blue Heron.

My husband said the same as above. I asked him, because his knowledge of birds is far better than mine. He said crane or heron.

Here is a great blue heron - is this the bird you saw? They can stretch their necks out way taller than this, and the coloring varies darker or lighter, although all of the ones I have seen were wearing shades of some sort of grey.

Jackie

Cranes and herons get big depending on what kind they are. Maybe a larger Grebe or albatross? Some of those can get pretty big too.

Thanks for the ideas. The shape looks very much like the Great Blue Heron. I will look up more pics of Cranes, Herons, Grebes and Albatross. Seeing them makes me want to see them again, and perhaps to go to a place that is more of a regular habitat for them. I have never seen anything like them around here.

I looked up " heron with white neck" and found a picture of the White Necked Heron which looks like the birds I saw. It is nice to know what they are.

Maybe they're not the White Necked Heron as that bird is Australian. The Pacific Heron looks similar . I didn't see any heron that looked the same in a list of 11 types of Herons seen in NC.

There is a white necked stork or wooly necked stork that also looks similar but they mainly seem to live in Asia.

Look at some pictures of Sandhill Cranes. They are grey, but the bodies can look darker grey and the necks lighter gray, so depending on the lighting they might have appeared to be dark bodied with white necks. They are wonderful birds. When I hear them flying and calling to each other overhead as they migrate I always think they sound prehistoric -- such a unique sound.

I have looked at some Sandhill Crane pics and the shape of them is similar but I think the birds I saw were a pretty intense black. Maybe some of them ARE blacker. I wish I had taken a picture ...one of my grandsons is interested in birds and he would have loved to see it, and I would have liked to have a picture of them too because in all my life I have never seen birds like that in a parking lot. I've rarely seen any birds that big or elegant.

I remember when we travelled from Houston to the Olympic peninsula we went to the aquarium in Seattle and saw a bunch of Puffins.

I recently saw a blue heron here in a field I was jogging by and the effect was not black at all.